MOVING - Navigation and Guidance Systems

Leading Question

"Where do I have to go now?"

The increasing complexity at central transfer nodes leads to disorientation, subjective insecurity and consequently to a psychological barrier for many people. These aspects have to be taken into account in the planning stage, as subsequent adaptions involve high costs. Therefore, it is of central importance to understand the way people interact with their surroundings in such situations. New media and other various informational content may also influence the behavior in terms of orientation and navigation. This influence and the requirements of future pedestrian guidance systems are the central questions of MOVING.

Our Contribution

The goal of MOVING is the development of an evaluation method for pedestrian guidance systems in public infrastructure, especially for the needs of people that are unfamiliar with the area. The immersive virtual environment DAVE, which is operated by Fraunhofer Austria at Graz University of Technology, provides the possibility to carry out tests in complex environments for different scenarios. The DAVE is a four-sided projection room in which a user can completely immerse. Researchers at Fraunhofer Austria develop the solution for visualization, realistic control methods, as well as the integration of an eye-tracking system for the behavioral analysis of the test subjects.

 

Your Benefit

In our virtual environment DAVE you can

  • inspect and walk through buildings before they are built;
  • experience dangerous situations but nevertheless safely evaluate evacuation measures with test subjects,
  • access and experience virtual worlds which are not accessible in the real world, e.g. the interior of an operating combustion engine.

 

Partners and Funding

The project MOVING is led by the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT). The partners are Engineering Services Architektur & Hochbau of ÖBB-Infrastruktur AG (Austrian railway systems), the architectural office DI Ritter, the center for usability research and engineering CURE, the Nous Wissensmanagement GmbH, the is-design GmbH and the visual computing division of Fraunhofer Austria. The project MOVING is funded by the BMVIT within the FFG-call ”ways2go”.